


The Enemy of My Enemy

by Sholio



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 09:59:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: AU. Thanos's snap happens in the middle of Talbot's fight with Daisy.





	1. Talbot

**Author's Note:**

> For my h/c bingo apocalypse square. In all honesty I don't think the timeline really works out at all here, but ... *handwave*.
> 
> Character death warning doesn't refer to any of the tagged characters.

Daisy's tough, but she's not that tough. Glenn wraps his arms around her and pinions her in a cage of Gravitonium. He won't listen to her lies anymore. She is nothing to him. None of them mean anything; it's not as if he means anything to them, after all. All that matters is making himself powerful enough to save the Earth; why can't they understand that? All they want to do is sabotage him, but he's too smart for them, too strong.

Daisy gasps and struggles. It will be the act of a moment to absorb her, and then -- 

And then --

And then he's holding nothing at all. 

He thinks for the first instant, as Daisy crumbles and blows away like ashes on the wind, that maybe the absorbing process works differently with her than with Creel, because of Creel's powers. But he's not doing this. Daisy is gone and she's not part of him, she's just _gone,_ a dusting of ash on his arms and the surrounding rubble.

Something clatters to the ground by his feet.

He stands there, baffled, then slowly bends down to pick it up. It's a syringe (something she was planning to attack him with?) and while he's still standing there holding it in confusion, a tremendous crash above him makes him look up. There's smoke and flame blossoming from the side of an office tower.

_Something I did?_

It's strange -- ever since the Gravitonium, he's been able to think more clearly than he ever has in his life. Everything makes so much _sense_ now. The equations of life and death, right and wrong, have the clear bright answers he's been searching for his whole life. There is always a right answer; it's just a matter of finding it logically. The end justifies the means. He looks back now on all the times he hesitated, all the times he found himself facing a thorny moral path that seemed to have no way through, and hates himself for his own cringing weakness. He used to think of himself as strong, but now he knows that he was exactly the same as everyone else: weak, confused, a shrinking little snowflake. The right answers were there; he just didn't have the decisiveness to seize them. A strong man wouldn't have broken under Hydra torture or succumbed to their brainwashing. It might have taken Gravitonium for him to finally find his spine, but now he's secure and confident in his own righteousness.

Or he was.

Now he stands and stares at airplanes falling like snowflakes out of the sky, rescue vehicles careening out of control, people grasping at empty air as their loved ones disintegrate in front of them -- and the self-proclaimed savior of the Earth, the most powerful man who has ever lived, the man who walked a path of corpses to make himself a hero, doesn't know what to do.

High above them, a jet headed to O'Hare careens down toward the city instead. Without really thinking about it, Glenn reaches out with his mind, catches it, and sets it absently in the middle of the street. He stands there as people pour out of it, not really looking at them, looking around instead and trying to comprehend what he's seeing.

Maybe it'll make more sense from above. The world always did make more sense to him in the sky, where you could see the big picture and not have people getting in your way with their complaints and conflicts and political maneuvering. He lifts himself away from the street filled with debris and sobbing people, soaring into the air above the city.

But it's the same everywhere. There's chaos at O'Hare, smoke rising from different parts of the city, traffic jams and fires. Some of this was caused when he landed in the city -- _necessary casualties,_ he tells himself, annoyed by a small inward twist of the old weakness. It just makes it different somehow, seeing it from up here, seeing all of this destruction caused by someone else (it wasn't him, surely?) yet indistinguishable from the destruction _he_ caused ...

_For good and necessary reasons._

An explosion makes him turn toward O'Hare, where the busy airport's complex system of air traffic control has completely broken down under whatever the hell is happening right now. The disorder is suddenly, painfully offensive to him. He waves a hand, pulls apart two planes about to collide, and sets them down on a relatively undamaged-looking section of runway. Drifting closer, he begins to find it soothing in a way that nothing really has been lately, not with the marching beat of urgency in the back of his mind ( _must stop Thanos, must get more Gravitonium, must save Earth_ ...). And that's all still there, he needs to get back to trying to get the Gravitonium, but there's another plane to set down (what is wrong with these fools anyway?), an oil fire to extinguish, a tottering air traffic control tower to straighten up ...

He notices that he's still holding the syringe he picked up from Daisy. It's tempting to crush it, but then he slowly tucks it into a pocket instead. _Never squander an asset, soldier._

And this makes him think about Daisy again. He dumps the contents of a water tower on another fire, multitasking busily between several parts of the airport, and thinking about how he's doing this instead of going after the Gravitonium. What if all of this is part of their plan? What if Coulson ...

Of _course_ it was Coulson. All of this, Coulson. Coulson and SHIELD. Why else, except to stop him out of petty spite and jealousy?

He abandons the airport cleanup, spinning around in midair in raging fury. He's going to kill that son of a bitch this time.

 

***

 

Although first he has to figure out where Coulson is.

Somewhere around Zephyr One seems like a good guess, and _that's_ not hard to find, in the middle of downtown Chicago where SHIELD has been collecting people salvaged from the damaged buildings. The surviving rescuees don't look so good right now, clustered around in traumatized little knots, some sitting on the ship's lowered ramp, others wandering around in shock.

And there aren't nearly as many of them as there should be. There aren't nearly as many people as there should be. For the most part, people have stopped evaporating, but every once in a while, one of them still goes up in smoke to the soundtrack of horrified screams from those who haven't become so inured to it that they've stopped reacting.

What did Coulson _do?_ Some kind of superweapon? "If you were aiming at me, Phil, you can't hit the broadside of a barn," Glenn mutters. He shoves past two terrified-looking, dust-covered refugees who shrink back from him, and rips a door out of his way. 

"Coulson!" he bellows.

Nobody in the halls except more refugees. Useless. Is he going to have to brute-force search this entire ship? "Where is Coulson?" he demands, grabbing an elderly woman. She just screams and tries to struggle free. Yeah, yeah, whatever. He pushes her aside and storms toward the cockpit, which is empty.

"Coulson! Get out here, you son of a bitch!"

"Oh, of course _you're_ still alive," a voice says from behind him. "We wouldn't be so lucky, would we?"

Yo-Yo Rodriguez. Wonderful. He spins around and pins her to the wall with a wave of his hand. "What in the dickens did you SHIELD idiots _do?"_

"What?" Yo-Yo gasps, struggling helplessly as he holds her against the ship's bulkhead. "You think _we_ did this?"

"Who else?" he demands, pressing harder. She opens and closes her mouth, struggling for air. He should just crush her chest. She's useless and she never liked him anyway, was probably laughing at him behind his back in the Lighthouse.

"Put her down, Glenn."

Well, _that's_ a familiar voice. Glenn lets her fall in a gasping heap and turns, slowly because he's trying to keep himself in check and not just shred the ship. He wants Coulson to know why he's about to die.

He's not really expecting to see Coulson looking quite _that_ much the worse for wear, leaning against the wall like it's the only thing keeping him up. "It's a trick," Glenn says, thinking aloud (that's less of a problem with the Gravitonium, but it comes and goes, like the anger control issues). Casually he backhands Yo-Yo into another wall when she starts to show signs of coming around.

"Leave her alone," Coulson says with a weak flair of vehemence, takes a step forward, and goes down in a heap.

Glenn stares at him. Anger goes spinning off into shards of confusion and what comes out unexpectedly is, "What the hell happened to you?"

Coulson smiles in that infuriating way he has, as he hitches himself painfully into a sitting position against the wall. "What does it matter?"

Glenn takes a breath. "It matters because I can't wring the truth from your corpse, you double-dealing, double-crossing backstabber."

"I know you won't believe it, but we never double-crossed you," Coulson says, looking up at him with an expression that's serene for a guy who is slumped against the wall, white as a sheet, and bleeding from the corner of his mouth. "We've all been working our asses off to save you."

Glenn barks a laugh. "Save me! I don't need saving. The _Earth_ needs saving."

"Yeah?" Coulson glances over at Yo-Yo, and then at the Zephyr's forward screens, showing a view of smoke and debris. "You're doing a great job."

"Shut up!" Glenn starts to lift Coulson with an invisible hand around his throat, but as soon as his body starts to rise, Coulson jerks and coughs and covers his mouth with a hand; it comes away splattered with blood. Glenn drops him and stares at him, crumpled at the base of the wall like a rag doll, barely able to sit up. It's a trick, it has to be, but if so it's a damn convincing one, and he doesn't really know what he's feeling right now.

... victory. Victory, is this feeling. It must be.

"Talbot," Coulson says quietly, jerking him out of his thoughts. "Where's Daisy?"

He doesn't answer, thinks again of Daisy blowing away like sand on the breeze.

"God damn it, Glenn." Coulson's voice is little more than a whisper. He lurches, tries to rise to his feet, and slumps back down, coughing. It looks like it hurts. "You killed her. You son of a bitch."

"I didn't!" The protest comes out involuntary and sharp. "I _didn't._ You killed her."

"I sent her out there," Coulson says, catching his breath, "and I'll have to live with that to my dying day, but --"

"You killed her with whatever weapon you tried to use on me!" Glenn waves a hand at the destruction visible through the Zephyr's viewscreen -- only some of which was caused by him, he reminds himself.

"I didn't do that, Glenn."

Coulson's voice is that quiet, convicted voice that has always been so goddamn hard to fight against. Rage flares in him again. Coulson _always_ does this, lets Glenn's anger roll off him and just looks back at him with that quiet, smug smile that Glenn wants to smack off his face ...

He's got the power to do it now. He could punch Coulson's jaw through his spine. Crush him into a little ball like a bug. Fling him through the roof ...

Coulson coughs again and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving a dark smear. "People are dying out there, General," he says in that same quiet, convicted voice. "All that death. All that destruction. Looks like the kind of thing a hero could do something about."

"Heroes," Glenn starts, "protect --"

"Heroes save." Coulson looks more than half dead, but his gaze on Glenn is steady. "Heroes _save_ people, General Talbot. And there are a lot of people out there who need saving."

Glenn stares at him. Coulson stares back. It's a good old-fashioned stare-down, and Glenn is the one who looks away first.

"Well, this just about dills my pickle," Glenn mutters to himself as he peels back the roof and launches himself out of it.

 

***

 

So he goddamn well saves people, if only to prove to that sanctimonious son of a bitch that he can do it.

He's not sure how much time goes by putting out fires, yanking whining civilians out of crumpled cars and the like. Putting the city back to rights. He likes it, taking a broken city and putting the pieces back into place. He can still feel the tug of the Gravitonium underneath Chicago, but while he still craves it like water in the desert, he only just got some of these sidewalks put back together and he doesn't really want to mess things up again. A real man has control. He wants it; he doesn't need it. Not just at the moment. It isn't necessary for what he needs to do. He'll get it ... later.

He finds himself watching a woman clinging to an empty baby stroller, sobbing. He still doesn't know what happened to these people -- some kind of biological weapon, he figures. Alien, maybe. He doesn't think SHIELD was behind it and he's not even sure why. Not their style, maybe. Whatever it was, something has caused a random selection of civilians to disintegrate, one hell of a lot of them, something like half the population of the city from what he can see. 

He _knows_ that individuals don't matter in the big picture, but it's odd, he keeps finding himself smiling at people as he pulls them out of cars, and enjoying the way they cling to him in sobbing relief. It's something the old Glenn would have liked, he thinks. The new Glenn knows that most people are out to get him and none of these people matter, but ...

But he finds himself crouching next to the woman with the baby carriage, putting a hand on her shoulder and then an awkward arm around her. "Stiff upper lip there," he murmurs to her. "Can't be that bad."

"My baby!" she chokes out through her sobs. She's cried herself hoarse, and her voice is a creaking rasp. "My Sally ... she just ... she was there and then she _wasn't_ , she looked at me and she came apart like sand ..."

Glenn's arm goes still around her and he stares into the middle distance, because ...

Carla and George.

He didn't even think about them until now.

Just.

Didn't think about them.

And _that's_ what really shocks him, right down to his core. He didn't think about it. Didn't think about _them,_ when they would have been, should have been the _first_ thing he thought of when all of this happened.

He launches himself into the air, knocking the grieving mother sprawling on the pavement.

 

***

 

The house is empty. He stands in the doorway, staring blankly at the tipped-over furniture. The crashed SHIELD vehicles are still outside, laced with police tape.

It was only earlier today. How can it still be the same day?

He walks through the living room. The Lego pieces are still lying on the coffee table and the floor. He bends down and picks one up, turning it over in his fingers.

Maybe they left. Went to stay with Carla's parents. Yeah, that's it. Must be it.

He touches the top of the coffee table, runs his thumb through a light dusting of grit, and then recoils as if it had burst into flame in his hands. He drops the Lego and stands up. Dimly he is aware that his hands are shaking like a leaf.

"No," he says out loud. "No, no, no. Heroes don't let things like this happen. Heroes save people."

_Heroes goddamn save people._


	2. Coulson

"You shouldn't be up, sir."

"Don't really have a choice, Rodriguez." Phil's voice rasps out of his throat, feeling like it's being scraped through glass.

"I suppose not," Elena murmurs. She disappears, and shortly she's back with a cup of water that she sets at his elbow.

He doesn't want it -- his stomach turns at the thought of putting anything in it -- but he takes a sip for form's sake. It does soothe his throat. He brushes a hand across the screen and switches to a different view. Same thing: disaster, damage, destruction.

"Aliens?" Elena asks quietly. She sits in the chair beside him, mechanical hands resting between her knees. She's covered with dust and soot and other people's blood.

"Probably."

"Talbot's allies."

"Same aliens, different aliens, I don't know." Phil leans back in the chair. He wants to put his aching head down and get some goddamn rest, but at the same time, he might not get up again. He knows he's close to the end.

"I'm sorry," Elena says, very softly.

"Mmm?"

"The serum." She's looking at her lap. "I was wrong. You should have taken it. In the end, it didn't make a difference, and at least that way ..." She pauses and draws a breath.

Phil finds the strength to pat her arm. "It was my decision. Might've been a bad one, but wrong or not, it's done." And he might never forgive himself for sending Daisy out there ... but that's done, too. Anyway, there's so much grief in him right now that it's hard to muster up too much guilt. That'll come later, he figures.

Out of all of his people on the Zephyr, it's just him and Elena. Just them.

May ...

If he starts thinking about this, he really will lie down and never get up. Anyway, there is one more person who survived whatever happened to them ... one more survivor who Phil would have considered, once upon a time, one of his.

"I don't suppose you know where Talbot is at the moment?"

"God alone knows." Elena waves a hand absently. "Out there somewhere. I'll give him this, he's been helpful -- doing a hell of a lot, actually -- and he hasn't killed anyone lately, that I've noticed."

Phil manages to smile. "They say a crisis brings out the best in people."

Elena grimaces. "That's not funny."

"Not trying to be," he says, with a sigh, and switches a screen to the view outside the ship. Nighttime. Dark. But not as dark as if the power was completely out. "How are things out there?"

"To be fair, it's not even the worst apocalypse we've ever seen," Elena says dryly. "There's power and water, and ..." She takes a breath. "... plenty of living space and food. The injured are being cared for. There will still be a good deal of work to do -- we've started organizing people to go door-to-door looking for small children and the disabled or elderly whose caregivers have vanished, as well as trying to help the suicidal. It's just ... so large. So large. There's not a single person who hasn't ..." Words fail her again.

"People need something to keep them busy in a situation like this," Phil says. The words come easily, glibly. "Helping others keeps them from being lost in their own grief."

"Is that why you won't lie down for five minutes?"

He doesn't answer. Elena gets up again, and comes back a few minutes later with a hot meal from the ship's galley, which she plunks down in front of him, and then digs a fork into her own.

"I'm not hungry."

"I'm sure you're not. I'm not either." She jams the fork into her mouth, and says around it, "I'm just taking your advice. Eat."

"I give terrible advice." Phil picks up the fork and prods at the unappetizing-looking mass of rice and meat and seasoning.

There's a thump that echoes through the entire ship, as of someone with boots landing on the ramp outside. Elena curses quietly in Spanish. "Look who's back. Too late to lock down."

"We really should have some security. There may be looters."

"I'll go see to it."

Phil is too exhausted to find out if trying to kick Talbot off the ship is part of her plan. Either she didn't bother, or it didn't work, because Talbot wanders into the ops room a few minutes later.

It's interesting, Phil thinks, how much difference a few hours make. He's not the same well put-together supervillain type that he was not long ago, in a crisply pressed alien suit with not a hair out of place. He looks ... like everyone else Phil has seen today, actually. Worn down and exhausted and grieving, covered with dust and soot. He stands in the doorway and looks at Phil, and after a moment Phil shoves the prepackaged meal across the table in Talbot's general direction.

"I'm not going to eat this. You want it?"

Talbot doesn't say anything, just stares into nowhere.

"Sit down, Glenn," Phil says, and after a long moment, Talbot sinks down right where he is, and sits with his back against the wall.

It takes awhile for Phil to get himself up, but he does, and comes over with the plastic tray of beef stir-fry. He flops down himself and, when he's recovered some equilibrium, sets it down on the floor between them. 

Talbot stares blankly at it.

"You okay?" Phil says after a minute.

"Carla and George ..." A long silence. "Gone," Talbot says, with one of the deflecting smiles he picked up as a habit at some point in his imprisonment. He raises a hand and lets it fall.

"I'm sorry," Phil says. The words sound empty even to him.

_Daisy's gone. Melinda's gone._

"Yeah," Talbot spits through his teeth. "I'm sure you are."

"Eat something."

"I don't think I need to eat anymore," is Talbot's response, somewhat absent, but he picks up the fork and twists it around in the congealing mess of food.

"Yeah? How does that work?"

"I don't know." Talbot stares out into nowhere again. "I can feel it, Phil," he says suddenly. "The Gravitonium deposits underground. I want it. I can use it to do great things. I can _save_ people."

"And break apart the city you just spent all day saving to get it. All those people you just rescued ... injured and dead."

Talbot draws a shuddering breath.

"You don't need the Gravitonium to be a hero, you know," Coulson says quietly. "You never did."

"I'm not listening to you anymore. You lie. You just want it for yourself."

Coulson drops his head back against the wall. He's tired, he's sick, he's done with this argument. "Think what you want," he says wearily. "You've known me for four years, Glenn. We've been locked up together, fought enemies together. You pointed a gun at me and didn't pull the trigger even with Hydra right there whispering in your mind telling you to. I've trusted you and you've trusted me. We've both seen a hell of a lot. I know that stuff's messing with your head right now, even if you don't, but ... think what you want. I don't have words to convince you, if our history together doesn't."

Talbot's voice is low and furious. "You _left_ me in that hell, Phil. You left me there."

Coulson closes his eyes. "I know. And I'm sorry as hell. And you're another person I let down. Just put you on the list, next to Fitz, and Simmons, and Mack, and Daisy, and Melinda, and ... hell, we better start a whole wall for it, that's what it's going to take ..."

He's slipping down into darkness, doesn't even realize it until Talbot is shaking him, the pain in his lungs and his body pulling him reluctantly back to a world he doesn't want to be in, and a rough voice barking orders at him. "Coulson! Damn it, Phil, I'm not done yelling at you yet ..."

Time skips, stretches ... he's on his back on something that his groping fingers tell him is one of the beds in the ship's infirmary. More exploration finds an oxygen mask over his mouth. He opens his eyes -- light's too bright, pointed directly at him ... he turns his head to the side and finds Talbot leaning against the wall, glaring at him, a fresh smear of blood on the side of his neck and his supervillain outfit that's probably Phil's.

"What _is_ wrong with you, anyway?" Talbot asks, his voice flat.

Phil coughs. His mouth tastes like metal. He pulls the mask down so he can talk. "I told you I was dying, back at the Lighthouse."

"Yeah, but I didn't know you meant ..." Talbot makes a helpless sort of gesture. "Soon. Now. Like this."

"It is what it is."

"Nothing they can do?"

All of Phil's sarcastic responses die in his throat, because this is the first time since the Gravitonium that he's really felt like he's talking to Glenn, rather than a Glenn overwhelmed with paranoia and megalomania. 

"Not really." He takes a breath; it feels like rocks grinding in his chest. "I made that choice. We had something ... modified Centipede serum, don't know if you read the files on that. Like Garrett was taking. Could've used it to poison you ..." Talbot stirs. "Yeah. I know. We didn't go that way. Made it into a serum that could've fixed me ... or powered up Daisy, to take you down." He smiles a little. Knows he's drifting, but he doesn't really care. "I told her to talk you down, and if she couldn't, to kick your ass."

"Centipede serum," Talbot says slowly. "What's it look like?" His hand moves, and something rolls into his palm. "Like this?"

Phil raises his head, startled out of his lethargy. The injector that Phil last saw when he tucked it into Daisy's gauntlet now gleams in Talbot's palm. The thick fingers curl protectively around it.

Glenn Talbot has always been easy for Phil to read. He's a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. He's been harder to read lately, but right now Phil can see exactly what he's thinking: the Centipede injector could give him a power-up that would allow him to dig out the Gravitonium deposits almost as well as Daisy's powers would have.

And Phil can see that he wants it. The defensive curl of his fingers says it all. 

Talbot takes a breath and tosses the injector toward him. Phil almost misses it ... almost. The reflexes of his mechanical hand save him, and he snatches it out of the air.

It feels like all his sins, come back to rest in this cool cylinder in his palm. He tries not to think about Daisy, tries not to think about how Talbot got this, and what went down between them. Tries not to think about how much he didn't want this decision to come back to fall at his feet. He was ready to hand the responsibility over to a new generation of heroes. Ready to rest.

Now those freshly minted new heroes are all gone, and it's just the old warhorses like himself and Talbot left.

"Thanks," Phil says. It comes out on a breath. 

Talbot gives him a tight nod, and leaves.

_Yeah,_ Phil thinks, feeling the faintest trace of a real smile, _he's still in there,_ and he struggles until he can sit up, and presses the injector to his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've marked this complete for now, although honestly I think there's a definite possibility I might write more of this (or a sequel). But I didn't want to leave people dangling forever if I don't.


End file.
